The CEO function will never change or care about new things. Let’s stop pretending.

I can sum up the idea of “CEO responsibilities” (at most companies) in two words: make money. Here are two additional words: prove growth. That’s what CEO responsibilities usually involve and entail, although unfortunately we tie it up in 35,027 other things that don’t make sense. “Thought leadership” and “the broader leadership industry” have rushed into this space, mostly providing absolutely no value back to leaders aside from “Think about your people, but only so much as you have to and I mean, think about money first. Oh hey, can you pay me now?” So that’s fun!

This is the first thing you need to consider about CEO responsibilities, though: most CEOs are men (read this) and, typically, they arrived at that perch through a specific set of actions and way of thinking. Aspect II: any man that genuinely wants to become a CEO or grow a business is probably aligned towards being a workaholic, and those types of guys derive a lot of their self-worth from work. In fact, this is often where “CEO responsibilities” crashes and burns anyway.

If you’re trying to get a sense of self-worth from work, well, you tend to focus on the areas you understand and/or can control. That leads to micromanaging. If you’re doing that as the CEO, the whole org will do it. This is what no one understands…